Admiring Mika: “your gut had it from the get-go. And it’s really fun to watch.”

Joe Scarborough took an I-told-you-so victory lap on today’s Morning Joe. In the wake of President Trump cutting a deal with Pelosi and Schumer, the show aired a prepared montage of Joe, going back almost a year, predicting that Trump would wind up working with Dems, with whom, according to Scarborough, he feels more comfortable.

When the montage ended, an admiring Mika Brzezinski said, “your gut had it from the get-go. And it’s really fun to watch.”

Note: in the montage, Joe repeatedly predicts that Trump would put together a coalition of 175 or so Republicans, and 40-45 Democrats. In fact, it’s more likely that Trump will get virtually all Dems as a block because Nancy tells them to vote that way, or he’s going to get none of them. This is not a situation in which some moderate Democrats will come over to his side.

Note segundo: if Joe can produce tape of himself predicting that the Kansas City Chiefs would beat Tom Brady’s Patriots by 15 points, I’ll really start believing in his powers of prognostication!

JOE SCARBOROUGH: I think it’s going to be so surprising to a lot of Republicans to see that Donald Trump is more comfortable talking to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer . . . He’s never hung out with guys like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan . . . You get 175 Republicans and you get 40 to 45 Democrats . . . If you want to have a coalition in the House that gets 175 Republicans, 40, 45 Democrats, you want somebody like Donald Trump. That can get both sides together and talk . . . I think [Trump] will roll right over [the Freedom Caucus and fiscal hawks] and Democrats . . . Democrats for massive infrastructure spending . . . Start with infrastructure, you can get Democrats and Republicans on board . . . Why did they start with health care after they stuck their hand on the same stove Bill Clinton did in ’93 and Obama did in 2009? Why are they going back to it? They’re like “zzzzz” [imitates putting hand on stove]. Oh, that hurt! Zzzzz! . . . If you wade into Obamacare, it’s going to be a disaster.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Okay! So why did you say — I know: he’s a Democrat, that’s one. But your gut had it from the get-go. And it’s really fun to watch.

Comments

I see this as a simple hard slap across the face of the GOPe congressional leadership to get their attention. This is not a shift in game plan. MSM etc. should resist the temptation to read too much into this deal.

Trump sold himself with one platform to a rightist group to get elected, and he’ll now move to the center to get reelected by a different, more moderate GOP base, and in his second term will become the Democrat he’d been for 90% of his adult life. No wall. No Obamacare repeal. No swamp draining. And his supporters will find excuses for all of it. Doubt me? See below.

I doubt you. After all, your like have been wrong nonstop for the last year. You are all just blindly and desperately searching to find the “I told you so” moment that has eluded you all for so long. It is pretty sad really…

Trump RAN as an outsider who would whup ass on the GOP establishment and the liberals. He knew he’d face opposition from both parties and the media and promised to defeat them. What does “drain the swamp” mean?

Now that he’s failing with his agenda and turning leftward, his supporters say, “well, he ran into political opposition, it’s not his fault.”

Trump working with the Democrats to give them what they want for nothing in return, a horrible bargain by any standard, but his supporters discount it as amazing brinkmanship because it hurts Ryan et al. Trump telling Congress to make DACA the law of the land, again a Democrat Party position, without securing anything in return and another bad bargain by any standard, but his supporters cheer because while the law stinks at least he’s doing it the right way. Trump supports the enshrinement of much of Obamacare and attacks Congressional Conservatives, but his supporters swoon because he’s sticking it to the #NeverTrump crowd that didn’t and won’t support him.

Tell me again how this left turn by Trump is a one-time tick and how he’s playing some long game to bring the country back to the right?

“ell me again how this left turn by Trump is a one-time tick and how he’s playing some long game to bring the country back to the right?..”

No one in reality can. Trump – and us – are facing sabotage by the rats of the GOPe. What’s laughable is that the GOPe has been enabling obama for the past 8 years, and now sabotages its base!

Support Trump for a while – a long while. He is way beyond being the ‘anti clinton’ (she would have destroyed the republic – no exaggeration.) Trump is also way beyond being the ‘anti-Jeb!’ – he has performed brilliantly and reliably.

Nonsequitous. It doesn’t explain or excuse Trump’s failures nor his turn to the left to help Democrats with their agenda, as well as helping a Democrat Senate incumbent by bringing (her) on tour with him and goodmouthing her, while willfully and purposefully putting Schumer and Pelosi in the driver’s seat for upcoming battles.

The only thing I’m surprised at is that he’s pivoting left after just eight months in office. But, he doesn’t need his conservative populist base anymore. To get reelected, he needs a new base, to be constructed of moderates from both the GOP and the Democrat Party. Then, in his second term, when he no longer has to worry about reelection, the real Trump will emerge, the one who was a Democrat for decades and decades until he realized he’d have to turn Republican to get elected, and he’s going to enable single-payer federal insurance, amnesty, and other Democrat agenda items. Also, if he gets to nominate another SC justice in his second term, it will not be a conservative like Gorsuch. He won’t need to bone throw for his old base anymore. He’ll nominate a moderate Democrat (who’ll turn lefty upon confirmation).

The Democrats wanted another blank check for three months instead of figuring out how to do an actual budget—you know, that thing they didn’t do for 8 years under Obama. They want their free money and they want it now! Congressional Conservatives knew that was a losing strategy as we’re broke and won’t be able to stop the slide into insolvency if we keep voting on short term money grabbing debt ceiling increases. Is hurricane relief the bill they should be ransoming for a debt ceiling vote, no, but instead of Trump saying THAT he just told GOP leaders to do what the Democrats want so he can get something pass now, and therefore secure his win; which is all he seems to care about.

In Congress, Pelosi and Schumer can deliver the votes. McConnell and Ryan can’t. As has been pointed out before, Party discipline is the only thing the Dems have going for them. In that sense they’re a vastly more effective party than the Republicans. This has been obviously true since at least the Nixon era, and slightly less obviously for many decades before that.

Therefore, if anything involving Congress is going to be done, it has to be done through Pelosi and Schumer. It sucks, but that’s reality.

Of course that calculus would change if McConnell or Ryan can get their acts together. But they probably won’t.

The NeverTrumpers will blame Trump for chronic McConnell/Ryan failure. Of course.

Meanwhile, the President will have to see what he can do with the small fraction of Congress which remains semi-functional. It’s a bad fraction, but at least it’s not mummified.

And we all know this. Failure to repeal ObamaCare means that the Republican Congress has failed.It is useless. There’s no virtue in pretending otherwise. Or in hoping that it will suddenly spring to life and the R’s will start earning their salaries. Just not gonna happen.

Of course we keep hearing about all these totally rad conservatives who are going to be voted in to replace those RINOs. But that hasn’t happened, either.

But that doesn’t stop the clock. There are things which have to be done. The Republican Congress won’t do them, so somebody else has to. Were it not for bad weather like Harvey, Washington could probably have blundered along for months more, pretending that something useful might, just might, come out of Congress some day. But the urgency of the Texas situation makes that impractical. It seems that the “Lack-of-Empathy” President doesn’t want to see Texans moping around the ruins of their towns for a few months—or years—while Congress dithers. And I can’t say he’s wrong.

What policies do you believe Pelosi and Schumer will be able to solidify enough Democratic votes to pass the Senate or House? Are the policies going to be in any way, shape, or form policies that are good for the Country or were promised by Trump during the campaign? As for blame, Trump sure likes to pass it around and never reserves any for himself, but yes, I’m blaming the leader of the Republican party for not leading on any issue and consistently muddy the policy waters with his contradictory tweets and statements on key issues while attacking Republicans non-stop for not just rolling over on any old bill because he wants a quick win.

Tom,
Saying the Republican Congress has “failed” is like saying the likes of traitors like bradley manning and hillary clinton “failed” in selling out their country.

The GOPe are rats, and have stabbing us in the back. They ALWAYS will. They have to be voted out as job one. We decimated their presidential field by electing Donald Trump. We should continue the work.

While she had the infatuated president’s ear, the New York Times relates: Ms. Pelosi took the opportunity to ask Mr. Trump to send out a message on Twitter emphasizing that the 800,000 immigrants enrolled in a program that he canceled this week can keep their protection from deportation and work permits over the next six months as it phases out.

That program, of course, is DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). Contrary to the Gray Lady’s assertion — and as we explained this week — Trump has not canceled DACA. Nor is it being phased out. Trump has signaled that either it will be codified in law or he will continue the program by lawless executive action — as he is doing for the next six months, as he has done for the last eight months, and as his predecessor did for four years. In any event, as Nancy tells it, “I asked him to do it. Then boom, boom, boom! The tweet appeared and that was good.”http://www.nationalreview.com/article/451212/daca-dreamers-trump-prosecutorial-discretion-obama-democrats-chuck-schumer-nancy-pelosi